anything worth the trouble. If your way of building up yourselves is, as
Aaron said his way of making the calf was, putting all into the fire,
and letting chance settle what comes out, nothing will come out better
than a calf. Brother! if you are going to build, have a plan, and let
the plan be the likeness of Jesus Christ. And then, with continuous
work, and the exercise of continuous faith, which knits you to the
foundation, 'build up yourselves for an habitation of God.'

II. We have to consider united edification.

There are two streams of representation about this matter in the Pauline
Epistles, the one with which I have already been dealing, which does not
so often appear, and the other which is the habitual form of the
representation, according to which the Christian community, as a whole,
is a temple, and building up is a work to be done reciprocally and in
common. We have that representation with special frequency and detail in
the Epistle to the Ephesians, where perhaps we may not be fanciful in
supposing that the great prominence given to it, and to the idea of the
Church as the temple of God, may have been in some degree due to the
existence, in that city, of one of the seven wonders of the world, the
Temple of Diana of the Ephesians.

But, be that as it may, what I want to point out is that united building
is inseparable from the individual building up of which I have been
speaking.

Now, it is often very hard for good, conscientious people to determine
how much of their efforts ought to be given to the perfecting of their
own characters in any department, and how much ought to be given to
trying to benefit and help other people. I wish you to notice that one
of the most powerful ways of building up myself is to do my very best to
build up others. Some, like men in my position, for instance, and others
whose office requires them to spend a great deal of time and energy in
the service of their fellows, are tempted to devote themselves too much
to building up character in other people, and to neglect their own. It
is a temptation that we need to fight against, and which can only be
overcome by much solitary meditation. Some of us, on the other hand, may
be tempted, for the sake of our own perfecting, intellectual
cultivation, or improvement in other ways, to minimise the extent to
which we are responsible for helping and blessing other people. But let
us remember that the two things cannot be separated;